[HN Gopher] US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps
___________________________________________________________________
US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps
Author : I-M-S
Score : 78 points
Date : 2024-06-28 18:54 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| jowdones wrote:
| Good!
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| It's now, effectively, illegal to just exist as a homeless
| person.
|
| Sleeping in your car? Jail.
|
| Sleeping under a bridge? Jail.
|
| Sleeping on a park bench? Jail.
|
| Sleeping in the woods? Jail.
| polski-g wrote:
| 3 of those things are simply trespassing.
| spankalee wrote:
| Where should they sleep?
| polski-g wrote:
| On property they own or property they have been granted
| permission to occupy.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Do you realize we are discussing people who own no
| property at all?
| polski-g wrote:
| Why is that relevant? People who do own things do not get
| to trespass; people who do not own things, likewise, do
| not get to trespass.
| alan-hn wrote:
| How does one trespass on public land
| polski-g wrote:
| Ask the Jan 6 rioters.
| spankalee wrote:
| But where do they sleep?!!
|
| It's relevant because there are people with nowhere to
| sleep. It's not possible for them to not sleep.
|
| Is your solution to jail them all, so that they sleep in
| jail?
| jjav wrote:
| > On property they own or property they have been granted
| permission to occupy.
|
| By definition, the homeless don't have that.
| polski-g wrote:
| The homeless have permission to be in many places at many
| different times. If they are unhappy with the current
| place and time limitations then they should vote for
| representatives to change such limitations.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| Let's see then. In order to vote, you will need:
|
| Driver's License or State ID. In my state (Georgia) to
| get these you must also provide a birth certificate or
| passport, as well as two documents showing Georgia
| residency (I.E., utility bill/phone bill that must have
| your address listed on them.
|
| Okay, so those are unavailable to the homeless as they
| most likely will not have their birth certificate or
| passport with them (as belongings are routinely
| confiscated by police during removals of homeless
| encampments). Nor will they have an address or a utility
| bill in their name. Oh, also, Georgia requires a
| residential address for these ID cards so while you can
| use a PO Box on the card itself, they still need proof of
| a residential address for their records.
|
| So, how again are the homeless expected to vote when
| they, legally, can't even get a drivers license or state
| ID card? This isn't even getting into the $25 it costs to
| get a copy of your birth certificate or the $32 fee for
| get a state ID. $57 could potentially feed them for a
| week, and when you don't know when your next meal is
| going to be, what's more important to you in that
| situation?
| spankalee wrote:
| Ok, but where exactly?
|
| It's midnight, there are several thousand homeless people
| in the city, where do they sleep?
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| Would you rather they slept in the sewers?
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Trespassing... on public goods?
|
| To me, who grew up in Central Europe and is obviously
| biased, that is wild.
| jjk166 wrote:
| None of those are trespassing. You're permitted to be in
| your car, you're permitted to be on a park bench, you're
| permitted to be under a bridge, you're permitted to be in
| the woods. It's only when you need to be there that it's a
| crime.
| polski-g wrote:
| Some parks have rules against smoking, grilling, flying
| kites, bringing dogs, playing lawn darts, being there
| after 9pm (that's the trespassing part), and yes, even
| camping. And those are all voted on by elected officials.
| If you don't like it, vote for different councilmen.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| One city banned camping in public, it was challenged, SC said
| "yep, that's a fair law". After this decision other cities
| may also ban camping, while some cities may welcome public
| camping. The SC is leaving it to the lowest level of
| government to decide for themselves, upholding a democratic
| principle.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| IDK man, I think arresting people for just existing in
| public who have nowhere else to go is a morally
| reprehensible act and has no right existing in a form of
| government that should operate under the best interest of
| it's citizens.
|
| But that's just me I guess.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| No problem, go to your municipal meetings and let them
| know you are in favor of allowing camping in public
| spaces in your municipality. If you vote in your local
| elections your representatives may also have similar
| opinions to yours. Talk to your friends and neighbors to
| ask how they feel about it too, maybe they agree.
|
| Democracy.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| People dying in the streets isn't something that should
| be up for debate or popular vote :)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _People dying in the streets isn 't something that
| should be up for debate or popular vote_
|
| This is useless hyperbole.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| If I cared I wouldn't have posted it.
| EPWN3D wrote:
| Now now, that would require the suburbanites who are
| eager to tut-tut and scold city-dwellers to put their
| money where their mouth is.
| EPWN3D wrote:
| There's no great answer here, unfortunately. Let's say
| the Supreme Court had ruled the other way and said "You
| cannot ban camping on public spaces if you don't have
| adequate shelter."
|
| The effect would be that smaller towns with limited
| budgets would face a potential influx of homeless people,
| since they don't have the resources to build shelters and
| therefore cannot ban public camping.
|
| Also, the proposed shelter constraint on the law is
| pretty dubious. Say a town builds a shelter and then it
| bans public camping. Does that law get nullified if a
| tornado destroys the shelter space? What if the shelter
| has 5 beds, but the homeless population grows to 100? At
| what point does that law become voided?
| matrix87 wrote:
| > who have nowhere else to go
|
| I call BS, there's thousands of other places in the
| country aside from downtown SF or other areas where they
| decide to congregate
|
| SC isn't banning homelessness nationwide, I highly doubt
| every municipality will ban it at once. It's just giving
| municipalities that suddenly get hordes of them showing
| up the ability to make them go elsewhere
| spankalee wrote:
| So you fine them and arrest them... then what?
| voidfunc wrote:
| Jail?
| Arrath wrote:
| So we're set on expending resources.
|
| If we're going to spend the resources to incarcerate these
| folks, would not the resources be better spent (with much
| better potential RoI, no less) on assisting persons in
| obtaining living situations?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we 're set on expending resources_
|
| I don't love this decision. But the endgame to homeless
| encampments in parks is parks being defunded and sold to
| developers.
| lwhalen wrote:
| What do you tell the families who scrimped, saved, and
| generally busted ass to be able to afford their homes?
| PessimalDecimal wrote:
| They get to pay for other people's stuff. See how this
| works?
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| _" Congrats, still doesn't mean that a homeless person
| should die in a ditch on the side of the road as some
| form of karmic balance."_
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Good news, instead of spending $45K/year of your hard
| earned tax money to keep Homeless Joe in jail, we're
| going to spend $10K of your hard earned tax money to keep
| him housed.
| underlipton wrote:
| That they were exploited, because no one should have to
| "bust their ass" to an exceptional level in order to
| afford a necessity. Also that we're going to make it up
| to them in some other fashion. Also pointing out that
| home-ownership is financially advantageous for tax
| purposes, so it _already has_ been made up to them, to
| some degree.
| beardicus wrote:
| nobody seems to have this concern when we provide room
| and board in prisons.
| TheCleric wrote:
| If they don't have compassion and understanding for
| someone who is at the lowest point of their life because
| it's "unfair" then I'm not particularly interested in
| talking to them.
| rand1239 wrote:
| Cost to send a person to a housing facility with high
| security is probably much higher than the cost to give them
| housing with no security.
| Animats wrote:
| A bus ticket to some declining town with lots of unused
| houses? San Francisco did this until 2017.[1]
|
| "A 2019 article in The New York Times reported that many bus
| ticket recipients were missing, unreachable, in jail, or
| homeless within a month after leaving San Francisco, and one
| out of eight returned to the city within a year.[2]"
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_homeless_relocation
| _pr...
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/us/homeless-busing-
| seattl...
| paxys wrote:
| Put them in a (private) prison so they can do bonded labor,
| of course. It is the American way.
| verandaguy wrote:
| In what way?
| sonofhans wrote:
| "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike
| to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their
| bread."
| jeffbee wrote:
| This is paraphrased unironically right there in the majority
| opinion. "The public-camping laws prohibit actions undertaken
| by any person, regardless of status."
| crmd wrote:
| As is common, the article does not link to the actual opinion.
| Here it is:
|
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf
| wilg wrote:
| Dumb decision, but we really just gotta build more homes mainly.
|
| A good overview of why this is the best solution to homelessness:
| https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...
| tomcam wrote:
| Why is it a dumb decision?
| delecti wrote:
| It makes it, not just de facto, but de jure illegal to be
| poor. If someone can't afford a home, where are they meant to
| go? Just fuck off and die?
| PessimalDecimal wrote:
| What about going to a homeless shelter, or to a
| municipality that does allow homeless encampments?
| squidbeak wrote:
| Homeless people don't tend to have the mobility you
| imagine.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| There is a charity run homeless shelter in the town where
| they were camping on public grounds.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Which requires people staying there to attend religious
| services.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| The horror. They can just go and...not pay attention?
| Just like most people who attend religious services.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Go to church or go to jail is not a choice we force
| people to make in this country.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| It's not "church or jail". The shelter is just one
| option. They could also crash on a friend's couch, or go
| somewhere with a shelter that doesn't require religious
| service.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Or they could just stop being poor and buy a mansion.
|
| No one is sleeping outside because they don't want to
| sleep on a friend's couch. It's a government ultimatum to
| force people to attend religious services, plain and
| simple.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| No, it's an ultimatum to not turn places intended for the
| public into your personal campsite. Even if your
| circumstances are bad.
| jjk166 wrote:
| That's not what the word ultimatum means, and they are
| the public.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Yes. It is what ultimatum means, because they can no
| longer flout the law without punishment.
|
| They are "members of the public". That doesn't mean they
| can unilaterally dictate the laws of society. If they
| were "the public", then they could just change the law. I
| wonder why they can't? Because most people don't want
| anyone setting up their household in a public park.
| jjk166 wrote:
| They weren't unilaterally dictating the laws of society,
| until 5 hours ago it was the US constitution which said
| this was the law in this country. 6 people unilaterally
| dictated the new law of society that enables the mob to
| ignore the rights of the few.
|
| Enjoy your park.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Believe it or not, but the legitimacy of our institutions
| aren't in question after a ruling you dislike.
|
| And I will enjoy my park. Maybe the rate at which I have
| been hearing stories about children getting pricked with
| dirty needles will lessen with this ruling.
| wolrah wrote:
| > There is a charity run homeless shelter in the town
| where they were camping on public grounds.
|
| That "charity" is a religious organization which requires
| all residents to abide by strict "Christian values"
| including immediate abstinence from all drugs (even
| nicotine) and sex, attendance to multiple daily sermons,
| etc. while also working for the organization.
|
| The group filed a brief with the court arguing for the
| ruling we got, stating that people were choosing to camp
| on the streets instead of go to the shelter as if that
| weren't an indictment of their offering that they believe
| a significant portion of their residents were only there
| because they would otherwise be arrested and not because
| it was actually a better choice than being on the street.
| tumult wrote:
| Article: "The homeless residents said those penalties
| violated the Eighth Amendment of the US constitution
| because the city did not have any public shelters."
| Xylakant wrote:
| What if just all municipalities forbid homeless
| encampments? The result of this will be a race to the
| bottom, as more and more municipalities ban homeless
| camps, the negative effects will concentrate on fewer and
| fewer municipalities, making the issue worse and worse.
| This will in turn drive them to forbid camps as well.
| 0xcafefood wrote:
| This seems like a slippery-slope argument.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Of course, eventually that will lead to a growing number
| of people just giving up and either accumulating tickets
| they will never be able to pay or actively draining city
| money by spending every other day in jail (which also
| happens to be temperature-controlled and have free food).
| ydnaclementine wrote:
| > as more and more municipalities ban homeless camps if
| that's a possible endgame, the law should have been to
| ban being homeless
| Supermancho wrote:
| > What if just all municipalities forbid homeless
| encampments?
|
| If all municipalities did this instantly and provided
| transportation to the homeless - either unincorporated
| parts of a state, or jail, most would choose jail. Nobody
| wants to try to survive in the wilderness.
| fragmede wrote:
| You might not, but nobody? There are those that do. There
| are even TV shows, multiple reality shows for watching
| people do just that. It's not easy living for sure but
| getting a cabin out in the woods and trying to live off
| the land is totally a thing people do.
|
| For a real world example, you don't go to the woods
| outside of Seattle because there are unhoused people
| living there and it's dangerous to go there.
| talldayo wrote:
| Nobody does. Bear Grylls wouldn't be popular if the
| overwhelming majority of Americans didn't choose lounging
| on the couch watching TV over survivalist practice.
|
| > but getting a cabin out in the woods and trying to live
| off the land is totally a thing people do.
|
| And not a realistic option for the homeless unless you
| can afford land to live on. What kind of bizzaro country
| do you live in where this is remotely realistic or legal?
| cwillu wrote:
| You know what all of those shows have in common? The
| protagonist has 20k$ to spend on the basic infrastructure
| needed.
| crooked-v wrote:
| There aren't even nearly enough homeless shelters. That
| holds the same basically everywhere in the US with a
| significant homeless population, except for those
| specific locations with a right to shelter law, like NYC.
| tedivm wrote:
| Before this case went to the supreme court, if a city
| offered someone on the street access to a homeless
| shelter then they were allowed to force the person to
| move. It was only when the city did not have shelter
| space that they were no longer allowed to criminalize the
| person for existing on public property.
|
| Now the city doesn't even have to offer bed space.
| gopher_space wrote:
| The shelters are full and other areas are in the same
| situation. When you see people living on the street that
| means the system is overloaded. The "visible" homeless
| are the tip of an enormous iceberg.
| Psillisp wrote:
| Be sure to get your bus ticket to shantytown after you get
| out of jail for existing.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| I know you're not actually asking for answer but the US
| spends trillions of dollars a year supporting homeless and
| otherwise disadvantaged people. There are public programs
| that exist solely to provide these people the help they
| need. In most cities something like half the homeless
| refuse free shelter.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| > the US spends trillions of dollars a year supporting
| homeless and otherwise
|
| No it doesn't
| crooked-v wrote:
| In most cities, free shelter _sucks_. It 's only
| available on a day by day basis (sometimes requiring
| waiting in line in a specific place as late as 7 or 8 pm
| to know if there will be any beds open), or it has weird
| hours that get in the way of working schedules, or it
| requires people to participate in religious activities,
| or it puts everyone in one big room with no safety
| measures, or it has no way to store even minimal
| possessions securely, or it has nowhere to plug in a
| phone charger, or it has all the spaces to plug in phone
| chargers in one heap where it's easy for someone to steal
| a phone as everyone's being made to rush out the door at
| 7 AM, or it doesn't allow even well-behaved animals,
| or...
|
| And on top of that, there's almost always a drastic
| shortage in shelter beds, so even people who jump through
| all the hoops only have a small chance of getting a spot.
| For example, Portland here, which is considered pretty
| homeless-friendly by a lot of people, only has enough
| shelter beds for about 1/5th of the homeless population.
|
| For a lot of people, even perfectly functional, non-
| mentally-ill people, this makes it a perfectly logical
| move to look at shelters as only a measure of last resort
| and otherwise sleep in a car or find somewhere out of the
| way that will let them put their energy into trying to
| improve their situation rather than into trying to
| satisfy a new shelter's rules every day.
| _heimdall wrote:
| It doesn't technically make being poor illegal. The sad
| truth is that plenty of people will living on the streets
| may now be breaking the law simply by having nowhere else
| to go, but that shit will roll up hill eventually. Courts
| and jails don't have the capacity to deal with charging
| everyone in that situation. Either cops will avoid
| arresting people for it or cities will eventually have to
| dramatically expand housing options for the homeless.
|
| In the meantime, yeah this is terrible for anyone who is
| homeless. It could very well do a disservice describing eh
| ruling as making being poor illegal though. The ruling only
| covers homeless camps, there are still a ton of poor people
| who do still have a roof over their heads that aren't
| breaking the law by being poor.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Something can be illegal even if cops are not resting
| everyone who does it. That's the worse situation in fact,
| when it becomes the sole discretion of individual police
| officers who to punish.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I totally agree. My point, though, was that being poor
| isn't illegal. The ruling keeps the jurisdictions for
| camping in public at the city level, it isn't specific to
| why someone is camping or broadly about being poor.
|
| If cops have to stop enforcing it the laws will
| eventually be overturned. If cops do enforce it courts
| and jails will back up, eventually the law would either
| be dropped or more support would be built out to help
| those in need.
|
| That's not to say I like the law. I would much prefer it
| didn't pass, and in general I disagree with a legal
| system that is focused on punishing citizens rather than
| helping them.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > It makes it, not just de facto, but de jure illegal to be
| poor.
|
| Wha? No, that's literally not true: Taking a _de facto_
| situation and making it more intense doesn 't magically
| transmute it into _de jure_.
|
| If it is truly de-jure illegal to be poor now, you'd be
| able to point at a law on the books _which says that_.
| squidbeak wrote:
| Homelessness isn't something that can be swept away.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| There are enough vacant homes in the US to give every homeless
| person 25 homes. That is not the root cause of the problem.
| loeg wrote:
| This is a vacuous argument. The vacant homes are largely
| either temporary (moving out before prepping to sell) or in
| the wrong places (no jobs). The homeless need more homes
| where they live and work (or seek work).
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| Have you seen the housing market in the past few years?
| Skyrocketing interest rates and construction levels not
| seen since before 2007, all which (to any economist who
| passed ECON 101 would say would lower housing costs) and
| homes are still 40% more expensive than they were in 2020.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _construction levels not seen since before 2007_
|
| Now plot post-War housing stock against population. We
| have more houses than ancient Egypt ergo supply and
| demand is fake isn't an argument.
| jeffbee wrote:
| There are not. The census definition of "vacant" clung to by
| people pushing this viewpoint includes uninhabitable
| construction sites that happen to have the doors and windows
| installed, homes that have already been rented or sold but
| the new occupant hasn't moved in yet, homes of deceased
| people still in estate probate, homes being repaired between
| tenants, and many others. Only about 9% of census-vacant
| homes are what a normal person thinks of as a "vacant home".
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| Great, if only 9% of vacant homes are what a normal person
| would think of as a vacant home, we can still give every
| homeless person 2 homes each!
|
| The issue has never been housing inventory in an effort to
| making housing more affordable. If the past 4 years have
| shown us anything it's that even with skyrocketing interest
| rates and new construction matching pre-2007 levels, homes
| are still 40% more expensive than they were in 2020.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Construction hasn't returned to pre-2007 levels. That
| right there seems to be the nut of your misunderstanding.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1pDWf
| paxys wrote:
| A bunch of cheap land or vacant homes 3000 miles away aren't
| going to solve the homeless problem in your city, or any
| other major urban area. Ultimately people stay where they
| want to stay, for a variety of reasons.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| And saying "just build more houses" isn't going to solve it
| either.
| vundercind wrote:
| Yep, fifty vacant houses in and around a tiny
| losing-10%-population-per-decade 500-pop town in the middle
| of Wyoming doesn't help anyone. No jobs, and good luck
| efficiently delivering public support to the person you
| stick in that one house with a mold problem and sewage tank
| that needed to be replaced years ago, a half-mile down a
| dirt road six miles outside of town. Without a car.
| jp191919 wrote:
| >Ultimately people stay where they want to stay, for a
| variety of reasons.
|
| With the majority of homeless, the reason would be easier
| access to illicit substances.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| Only 26% of homeless people abuse drugs, find a new
| stereotype.
| EPWN3D wrote:
| And who's going to rent their property to every homeless
| person? You? I'm unclear on what the volume of available
| housing has to do with this. That housing is owned by people
| who are free to rent it or not rent it as they see fit. Are
| you saying that the federal government should just confiscate
| it so it can be given to homeless people free of charge? Or
| that those owners should be forced to sign leases with
| homeless people? Who gets to decide which homeless people get
| which vacant houses?
|
| And a large chunk of the homeless population are drug addicts
| with serious mental health problems. All the free housing in
| the world isn't going to help them. So what does an owner
| forced to rent his property to a homeless person do if that
| person trashes the place, doesn't pay rent, causes problems
| in the neighborhood, etc.? Evict them? That just means that
| some other homeowner is compelled to be a landlord for this
| person (in your system).
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| My comment on this is that the statement "just build more
| homes" is not an effective solution to this problem. We
| have enough homes. The issue is that as homes are viewed as
| an investment, rather than as a necessity to live a decent
| life, they must maintain scarcity. If there is not a
| scarcity, then it will be created.
|
| Interest rates have tripled, which should have dropped
| house prices. Construction is faster than it was before the
| 2007 Housing Crisis. Both of these factors should have
| drastically reduced housing costs, however, prices are
| still 40% higher than they were in 2020.
|
| I'm not saying to confiscate homes. I'm not saying to force
| people to rent out their homes to homeless people.
|
| >A large chunk of homeless people are drug addicts with
| serious mental health problems.
|
| Only 26% of homeless people abuse drugs. A vast amount of
| homeless people are veterans who have complex mental health
| problems from their service in the military, elderly people
| who are trying to survive off of insufficient SSI payments,
| or LGBTQ youth who were kicked out of their homes.
|
| This isn't a problem that can be solved with some witty
| one-sentence solution. This is a problem that takes layers
| of support systems ranging from health services, to public
| transportation, to subsidized housing, to job placement
| programs.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Construction is faster than it was before the 2007
| Housing Crisis. Both of these factors should have
| drastically reduced housing costs, however, prices are
| still 40% higher than they were in 2020_
|
| You were corrected on this above and chose to repeat it.
|
| Concluding price from supply only is nonsense. In your
| interval, the population and real incomes rose. They rose
| faster than new housing formation, particularly in the
| cities which have a homeless problem.
| crooked-v wrote:
| An empty home in a town with no jobs and no services doesn't
| help anybody.
|
| If you look at the places that people actually want to live
| in the US, there are housing shortages in every major US
| metro area (https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-
| insights/perspectives...).
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| Copying from my other comment. My comment points out the
| failure of the "just build more homes" idea as a solution
| for homelessness.
|
| "My comment on this is that the statement "just build more
| homes" is not an effective solution to this problem. We
| have enough homes. The issue is that as homes are viewed as
| an investment, rather than as a necessity to live a decent
| life, they must maintain scarcity. If there is not a
| scarcity, then it will be created. Interest rates have
| tripled, which should have dropped house prices.
| Construction is faster than it was before the 2007 Housing
| Crisis. Both of these factors should have drastically
| reduced housing costs, however, prices are still 40% higher
| than they were in 2020.
|
| I'm not saying to confiscate homes. I'm not saying to force
| people to rent out their homes to homeless people.
|
| >A large chunk of homeless people are drug addicts with
| serious mental health problems.
|
| Only 26% of homeless people abuse drugs. A vast amount of
| homeless people are veterans who have complex mental health
| problems from their service in the military, elderly people
| who are trying to survive off of insufficient SSI payments,
| or LGBTQ youth who were kicked out of their homes.
|
| This isn't a problem that can be solved with some witty
| one-sentence solution. This is a problem that takes layers
| of support systems ranging from health services, to public
| transportation, to subsidized housing, to job placement
| programs."
| crooked-v wrote:
| > We have enough homes.
|
| We don't have enough homes _in the right places_. That 's
| the point of the report in the article I linked, which
| lays out the number of homes in the major metro areas
| that people actually want to live and shows that
| literally all of them have a shortage.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Dumb decision
|
| Well, what's the alternative? Do you believe all local laws
| such as "FooBar park closes at dusk" are _federally
| unconstitutional_ , and that actually enforcing any of them is
| "cruel and unusual punishment" against people who desire to
| camp there overnight?
|
| Remember: It's perfectly possible to say that certain
| situations are unlawful/unjust/immoral for _other_ reasons, it
| 's not like "I think it violates the 8th Amendment" is the
| _only_ option.
|
| However, "it violates the 8th Amendment" is was what got argued
| in the court, and I think the conclusion is reasonable: The
| entire category of local laws (which are not new) are generally
| and by default not-against-the-8th.
| Terr_ wrote:
| P.S.: To reiterate, exactly what do you think the "not dumb"
| result should have been? What sentence of words could the
| Supreme Court have responded with that would satisfy you
| while (A) not wildly overstepping their own powers and (B)
| not upending centuries of other law considered good and (C)
| not creating massive new problems and loopholes?
|
| Here's a quick "unit test" to apply: Could I steal and eat
| all the food I want with total impunity, provided I am
| careful to ensure my wallet is always empty so that paying
| for it in that moment is never an option?
| jjk166 wrote:
| I believe "cruel and unusual" is obviously context dependent
| and intended to prohibit the government from applying
| punishments that are technically permissible under the law
| but which society considers completely unreasonable under the
| circumstances. The argument that fining a homeless person is
| not cruel because fining a rich person is not cruel and thus
| fines can not be cruel is absurd.
| relaxing wrote:
| Yeah man. Punishing someone for being is poor and living
| outside of society by making them poorer and pushing them
| further outside society is cruel and unusual.
|
| The majority's justification that it is fair because it
| applies to those whom it will never apply to is particularly
| craven.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| The US has a long history of punishing people for being
| poor. Certainly nothing unusual about that.
| underlipton wrote:
| The best solution to homelessness is to crash the housing
| market so thoroughly that the idea of residential homes as
| investments becomes anathema for 2 or 3 generations. Then you
| enact Georgist land policy and loosen zoning and Bob's your
| uncle.
| legitster wrote:
| In the last 30 years, we have lost ~1,000,000 SRO apartments:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-room_occupancy
|
| In that time homelessness has grown to 600,000. It's a pretty
| obvious correlation.
| Terr_ wrote:
| That's only assuming location is irrelevant, and that an
| abandoned shack on Bodie, California can help a homeless
| person in New York.
| legitster wrote:
| The cities with the biggest homeless populations today lost
| the most. Read about the chicken-wire hotels in New York.
| canada_dry wrote:
| > build more homes mainly
|
| Having effective and readily available mental health programs
| is a more critical step IMHO.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Most homeless people do not have a severe mental illness.
| Costs of living are the strongest correlates of homelessness
| rates.
| sschueller wrote:
| This is insane, so you are at your lowest in life and it is now
| illegal for you to exist.
| asdff wrote:
| I think its more about regulating where you can do certain
| things vs making it illegal to exist. For example its illegal
| to urinate and defecate in public despite these being automatic
| functions, sometimes involuntary and demanding release right
| then and there wherever you are. Despite this biological
| reality, we also understand that there are sanitation issues to
| allowing the body to relieve itself wherever it happens to be,
| so we have laws that criminalize public urination or defecation
| and attempt to direct this behavior towards areas where we can
| better handle that sanitation issue, and we establish
| guidelines of what that sanitary environment should be through
| the building code, and have our sewer departments expand
| capacity to meet this need.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > regulating where you can do certain things
|
| If people who don't have a home can't sleep on public land,
| where can they sleep?
| asdff wrote:
| In a shelter. Most recent reports suggest that a lot of the
| new shelters cities have been building are not being used
| to their intended capacity. Probably because there isn't a
| way to implore people to go into shelter beyond offering it
| and trying to move them along from where they are presently
| camped using existing rulings (such as no camping near a
| school and other such laws certain cities have passed
| recently). If peoples choices are instead shelter in the
| provided shelter or spend a night in jail (which cities
| don't even have the space in their jails to jail every
| homeless person today fwiw), they might start filling these
| shelters, which might show the public that it is worth
| while to invest more money into building more of them
| considering they are getting used.Right now, its too easy
| to convince the public that homeless spending has been a
| waste of time and money on part of the poor utilization of
| present affordances. Sentiment on my local city subreddit
| about an upcoming homeless service tax program is pretty
| much in the gutter right now.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| They can sleep on public land. Just not public land where
| it is illegal to sleep. This ruling also allows cities to
| set up designated camping grounds and banning camping
| elsewhere which courts ruled was banned in Chico. Why
| should we accept that the homeless can sleep wherever they
| like and ruin all the public land for the rest of us?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > They can sleep on public land. Just not public land
| where it is illegal to sleep.
|
| Those were the same in Grants Pass. And nearly 40% of
| cities according to a cited brief.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| The world is much larger than Grants Pass. There is
| unincorporated land just outside city limits, and blm
| land not far
| alan-hn wrote:
| So where do you suggest homeless people sleep
| asdff wrote:
| In shelters the city state or federal government sets up.
| To me we are essentially hosting a concert with no
| bathrooms. The answer isn't to let people pee and poop
| without bathrooms at the concert, the answer is to police
| that behavior while also providing bathrooms.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The whole point of this judgment is that cities can now
| illegalize homelessness _without needing to build any
| shelters_.
| asdff wrote:
| Well, most cities with a homeless crisis today don't
| exactly have the spare jail capacity to actually enforce
| anything like that, so I think giving some tools where
| you can be pragmatic about where an issue is presently
| taking place while you can attempt to solve it on the
| back end is useful. My city has already passed laws about
| homeless camps near dangerous intersections for
| pedestrians who have to step into the street to avoid the
| camp, laws about not camping near schools or childcare
| centers, and its done quite a bit to help the average
| pedestrian in the neighborhood as a result.
| crooked-v wrote:
| I think the most likely "pragmatic tools" that will show
| up will amount to homeless people being told "take this
| bus ticket to NYC or San Francisco or we will make your
| life hell for the next year with maximally unpleasant
| prosecution".
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > some tools where you can be pragmatic about where an
| issue is presently taking place
|
| Grants Pass said nowhere in the city. And nearly 40% of
| cities according to a cited brief.
| curtis3389 wrote:
| This is quite horrifying, but not particularly surprising. Most
| Americans have dehumanized homeless people, because if we truly
| saw them as equal humans, we would have to acknowledge that we
| all exist in a system where our humanity is contingent on the
| contents of our bank account.
|
| Programmers today can feel the angst caused by this
| dehumanization when they look at LLMs generating code. We can
| see that our humanity could be ripped from us at any time.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| > Programmers today
|
| Or they can just look out the window of the former SRO
| apartment they took over in the Tenderloin.
| paxys wrote:
| Big W for the prison industrial complex.
| araes wrote:
| I'd check for an uptick in prison related stocks and
| commodities, except they're buried under the post-debate slump.
| Maybe in a few days. Supreme Court decisions probably take a
| few days to filter out to the somewhat less news obsessive
| parts of society.
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| Yes and no. They said it's not cruel and unusual punishment to be
| fined / spend a few days in jail.
|
| The real issue should have been intent, but the litigants and
| lower courts didn't base the case on lack of capacity to comply /
| lack of mens rea / etc. They wanted a precedent allowing for
| urban camping _even if you're not homeless._
| Terr_ wrote:
| I'm not sure if the plaintiffs' arguments were quite _that_
| bad, since the ruling mentions that they raised questions of
| capacity and "involuntary" situations, ex:
|
| > Plaintiffs insist the Court should extend _Robinson_ to
| prohibit the enforcement of laws that proscribe certain acts
| that are in some sense "involuntary," because some homeless
| individuals cannot help but do what the law forbids. [...] this
| Court already rejected it in Powell v. Texas [where] a
| defendant who had been convicted under a Texas statute making
| it a crime to " 'get drunk or be found in a state of
| intoxication in any public place.' " [...] argued that his
| drunkenness was an "'involuntary'" byproduct of his status as
| an alcoholic.
| throwup238 wrote:
| From the majority opinion page 20 [1]:
|
| _> Under the city 's laws, it makes no difference whether the
| charged defendant is currently a person experiencing
| homelessness, a backpacker on vacation, or a student who abandons
| his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a municipal
| building._
|
| The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to
| sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their
| bread.
|
| [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf
| Terr_ wrote:
| To wit:
|
| > Held: The enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating
| camping on public property does not constitute "cruel and unusual
| punishment" prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| In part because the Eighth Amendment "prohibits certain methods
| a government may impose after a criminal conviction, but it
| does not 'impose [any] substantive limits on what conduct a
| state may criminalise.'"
| coolspot wrote:
| Homeless need shelter and help. It is inhumane that we let them
| rot on the streets.
|
| City dwellers need safe and clean streets and public
| transportation. Kids should be able to walk to school by
| themselves.
|
| These two things don't need to be in conflict.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It is inhumane that we let them rot on the streets_
|
| Agree. But is it cruel and unusual? The court says no.
| PessimalDecimal wrote:
| The court rules that it is not cruel or unusual to arrest and
| jail people for camping in public, right?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _court rules that it is not cruel or unusual to arrest
| and jail people for camping in public_
|
| It rules that the Eighth Amendment doesn't substantially
| restrict what constitutes a crime, just the punishment. (It
| restricts criminalising status. So the court mostly
| focussed on whether the law criminalises homelessness,
| versus specific actions, which it found it does not.)
| thfuran wrote:
| The court ruling was about charging them money for being left
| to rot on the street, not leaving them in the street in the
| first place.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| Many people misunderstand what this case was about.
|
| > Homeless need shelter and help. It is inhumane that we let
| them rot on the streets.
|
| The issue being argued was _not_ that homeless should be able
| to camp where ever and whenever they want. This issue was that
| _if you don 't provide shelter_ then _you cannot kick them out
| of public spaces_.
|
| If that was the law, then it would mean _you need to build
| shelters if you don 't want homeless in the streets_.
|
| What this new verdict means is:
|
| - You can forcibly remove homeless people who _have nowhere
| else to go_
|
| - Thus homelessness can be effectively illegal
|
| - The only realistic solutions now are: - Put
| the homeless in prisons - Move them to cities and
| towns that don't have the resources to remove them.
| crooked-v wrote:
| I genuinely expect mass arrests and quasi-deportations of the
| homeless (along the lines of "we won't prosecute you if you
| take this bus ticket to San Francisco") over the next few
| months in red states and in red cities in blue states.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Why not blue cities in blue states? California's governor
| and San Francisco's mayor praised the decision.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/sf-
| supre...
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| The Grant's Pass law provides repeat homeless campers with
| shelter and keeps them off the streets for up to 30 days per
| offense.
|
| That's expensive, of course, so cities will have the incentive
| to do what the city of Chico did when it provided an outdoor
| shelter facility for the homeless. A district court refused to
| allow Chico to enforce it's ban on camping even though it had
| that facility, because it was an outdoor facility not an indoor
| one. This ruling gives cities the ability to say "you can camp
| here, not there".
| kingofthehill98 wrote:
| Can't have a home if you don't have a job. Can't get a job if
| you're homeless.
|
| It's the year 2024 after the birth of Jesus Christ, mankind has
| produced more wealth and technology than we ever thought it was
| possible, meanwhile we're living this miserable life, working
| these shitty jobs, while less than 1% of the population has more
| money than they could ever spend.
|
| Capitalism should be left behind, we're ruining the only planet
| we have. It's a system with a critical bug deep in it's core and
| it'll never be fixed.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Discussion from when the argument was being heard:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40107034
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _What the Supreme Court case on tent encampments could mean
| for homeless people_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40107034 - April 2024 (88
| comments)
| nimbius wrote:
| I feel like the outcome of this is unilaterally bad.
|
| Most homeless are elderly and mentally Ill. The solutions are
| institutionalization and retirement housing/pensions but no state
| did this after Reagan and instead made homelessness an issue to
| ignore.
|
| Faced with the ability to legally incarcerate nearly 600,000
| people, states likely won't hesitate to do just that without a
| second thought.
|
| For a country that prides itself on freedom and liberty, having
| the largest prison population in the world is surely a damning
| indictment of the conviction.
| canada_dry wrote:
| > states likely won't hesitate to do just that
|
| Especially those that have for-profit prison system - which in
| some cases have state legislators as investors/stakeholders.
| legitster wrote:
| > Faced with the ability to legally incarcerate nearly 600,000
| people, states likely won't hesitate to do just that without a
| second thought.
|
| Prisoners cost ~ $40k a year annually in taxes. It's actually
| cheaper to house them - so I don't think states are going to be
| gung-ho about doing either.
| crooked-v wrote:
| There's plenty of political support across the US to imprison
| people, no matter how much it costs. There's almost none to
| build people housing, even if it's cheap. People are
| illogical like that.
| jjav wrote:
| > Prisoners cost ~ $40k a year annually in taxes.
|
| The racket is that many prisions are private for-profit
| companies. So this is a way to funnel taxpayer money into
| those corporations. Who in turn are friends and campaign
| contributors of the politicians who push for more people into
| prisions. So it all feeds itself and the cost doesn't matter.
| The more cost, the better (to them).
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > Most homeless are elderly and mentally Ill. The solutions are
| institutionalization and retirement housing/pensions but no
| state did this after Reagan and instead made homelessness an
| issue to ignore.
|
| Most homeless people are working age and homeless under a year.
| Costs of living are the strongest correlates of homelessness
| rates.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I suspect there's a bimodal distribution between shorter and
| chronic homelessness
| toast0 wrote:
| I don't think it's a good plan, but if you incarcerate the
| homeless, you're housing them and meeting their basic needs. At
| least until the prisons become overcrowded.
|
| There's lots of reasons why it's not a good solution, but
| having encampments in public parks isn't a good solution
| either.
|
| But I think this ruling allows governments to disrupt
| encampments without providing shelter _or_ incarceration.
| Forcing people to disperse from an encampment with nowhere in
| particular to disperse to, is probably a worse result for the
| people in the camps, and is likely not to be effective for the
| communities impacted by the camps; the camps may move around
| more often, but they 'll likely start up again with the same
| few places in rotation.
| floxy wrote:
| >The solutions are institutionalization
|
| Isn't there a lot of rose-colored glasses around
| institutionalization of the mentally ill? The reason we got rid
| of it is because it is essentially imprisonment, with all sorts
| of abuses and not some sort of all-inclusive luxury resort.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| >I feel like the outcome of this is unilaterally bad.
|
| As a resident of California, I wholeheartedly disagree. The
| status quo could not continue. We need law and order. We can't
| have people just sleeping and camping wherever they want like
| California has been allowing. Many many public parks and open
| spaces are now taken over by open drug scenes (homeless camps)
| where crime thrives.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| The Court didn't make it illegal for cities to provide services
| to the homeless. Some, many, (most?) simply find it easier to
| push homeless around between each other and off into the margins
| (outside of their municipal boundaries) instead of addressing the
| issue. The Court isn't a social services agency and rulings
| shouldn't be made on that basis. Cites, states, and even the
| federal government have the power to address homelessness. Using
| homeless camps as a perverse bottom tier safety net isn't a
| solution and is completely tangential to the legality of
| regulating their existence. I don't understand this notion that
| court rulings should be based on social policy instead of
| Constitutional law.
|
| Once again, governments are not being limited in their ability to
| go out and provide services.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| Probably because it _is_ easier than addressing the issue,
| since no one has ever really solved the problem of homeless
| throughout recorded history.
|
| Lots of people claim there are easy solutions, yet not one of
| them seems to actually work; homelessness exists in every major
| city today, even the ones where you don't see them as a
| tourist.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > The Court didn't make it illegal for cities to provide
| services to the homeless.
|
| Who claimed they did? The complaint I saw was they made it
| legal for cities not to provide services.
|
| > I don't understand this notion that court rulings should be
| based on social policy instead of Constitutional law.
|
| What is cruel and unusual punishment is a constitutional
| question.
| relaxing wrote:
| Good news: our fundamental freedom to die in the streets has been
| preserved.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| This is not about criminalizing homeless. This was San
| Francisco's position in their brief:
|
| _To address the homelessness crisis." San Francisco Brief 7. The
| city "uses enforcement of its laws prohibiting camping" not to
| criminalize homelessness, but "as one important tool among others
| to encourage individuals experiencing homelessness to accept
| services and to help ensure safe and accessible sidewalks and
| public spaces."_
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| Some more discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40820994
| jjk166 wrote:
| > Plaintiffs insist the Court should extend Robinson to prohibit
| the enforcement of laws that proscribe certain acts that are in
| some sense "involuntary," because some homeless individuals
| cannot help but do what the law forbids. The Ninth Circuit
| pursued this line of thinking below and in Martin, but this Court
| already rejected it in Powell v. Texas. In Powell, the Court
| confronted a defendant who had been convicted under a Texas
| statute making it a crime to "get drunk or be found in a state of
| intoxication in any public place." Like the plaintiffs here,
| Powell argued that his drunkenness was an "involuntary" byproduct
| of his status as an alcoholic. The Court did not agree that
| Texas's law effectively criminalized Powell's status as an
| alcoholic... This case is no different.
|
| If you told me this quote was from an Onion article, I'd say
| "well obviously."
| jl6 wrote:
| What's that story where they solved the problem of poor people
| stepping on the property of landowners, by giving them helium
| balloon grants?
| legitster wrote:
| *Correction: the cities can ban camps.
|
| It would still be a violation to ban "homeless" camps, and the
| decision was very clear that homelessness is a protected status,
| but just because you have a protected status does not mean you
| get to break laws that do not target you.
|
| "Under the city's laws, it makes no difference whether the
| charged defendant is homeless, a backpacker on vacation passing
| through town, or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out
| in protest on the lawn of a municipal building."
| crooked-v wrote:
| I really don't see the _mens rea_ of someone sleeping outside
| because they have no where else to sleep instead.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| There is no mens rea needed.
|
| As it is said, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids
| rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the
| streets, and to steal their bread."
| Terr_ wrote:
| IANAL but I think that's confusing _mens rea_ with something
| else more like _malice_.
|
| If someone sees a sign says "Camping prohibited", and they
| decide to camp there anyway, that's _mens rea_.
|
| It doesn't depend on whether they had other options, or
| whether they desired to purposefully harm others, or whether
| they were very sure they'd be able to avoid harming the
| grass, etc.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| I don't really understand how it could be any other way.
|
| If you envision a hypothetical city which has too many unhoused
| persons relative to the city's financial ability to support those
| people - then what? The unhoused just die in the street unable to
| be moved somewhere that has sufficient resources to support them?
|
| I get that there's a lot more nuance to this problem and that the
| ruling can be abused/used to enforce NIMBYism/jail the unhoused,
| but, fundamentally, cities have to have the ability to move
| citizens because the city is aware of its own financial ability
| to provide support, but the citizens within are allowed to be
| uninformed.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| What cities say they have the resources to support other
| cities' homeless people?
| banish-m4 wrote:
| I was technically homeless for 9 years.
|
| This is the further erosion of social safety nets and
| criminalization of poverty while dodging the responsibility of
| not helping people who need it.
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